How Much Does 3D Animation Cost?

Your questions answered on the price of animation, from blockbuster films to bespoke commissions.

Animation is often considered to be expensive, but the reality is the costs involved fluctuate wildly across different media platforms and art styles. A small animated promo project can be very affordable when compared to feature film budgets, so to get a real understanding of typical price points let’s take a look at a range of financial averages across the animation industry, including actual movie VFX budgets gleamed from dozens of hours of research. Here are some quick links if you want to skip ahead to the section you are most interested in:

To anyone in the visual effects industry, budgets are a contentious issue. To try and make estimates was previously almost impossible due to the incredible level of secrecy around the bids that competing studios submit to film production companies. Relentless undercutting of the competition has been cited as driving the VFX industry into the ground to the point where Oscar winning facilities are going bankrupt. This is a huge problem for the overall well-being of the industry and its artists and perhaps greater financial transparency could begin to remedy some of the issues. VFX budgets are normally estimated on a calculation of the likely number of shots in a movie, often based on a best guess by reading the script and storyboard. This cost is then often locked in place, regardless of extra shots or countless revisions.

The cost of Green Lanterns VFX was more than $9 million over it’s original $45 million budget.

Due to the extraordinary events late last year in the movie industry, there are now sources available online where you can find real VFX budget data for the first time ever. So lets take a look at the figures in comparison to overall movie budgets. The shot counts were gleamed from interviews, ‘making of’ articles, official sites and other sources. In the interest of privacy, the budget source documents will not be made available or linked to via this website and the figures have been rounded.

Movie VFX Budgets

All figures are estimates and have been rounded.

Film

Gross

Total Budget

VFX Budget

# VFX Shots

Cost Per Shot

Average: $42k

Alice in Wonderland

$1025m

$200m

$78m

1700

$46k

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

$709m

$255m

$60m

1600

$38k

Men in Black 3

$624m

$215m

$64m

1,200

$53k

Oz The Great and Powerful

$493m

$215m

$90m

1,500

$60k

Edge of Tomorrow

$369m

$178m

$46m

1200

$38k

Smurfs 2

$347m

$105m

$43m

1200

$36k

Green Lantern

$220m

$200m

$54m

1315

$41k

The Monuments Men

$155m

$70m

$6.2m

200

$31k

Pixels

$64m

$110m

$23m

650

$35k

So making broad brush strokes here we can see that movie VFX for big features comes in around the $42k per shot mark. Several smaller films were also on the roster such as The Interview, Sex Tape and Aloha, but their VFX budgets were much smaller and precise shot counts could not be sourced so were omitted from the list. But very roughly, it appeared the average cost per shot for these lower budget movies was between $10k-$20k.

The Interview had a notably lower estimated VFX budget per shot than the blockbuster average.

Of course every shot comes with its own unique challenges and scale of production involved. Simpler shots such as set extensions and wire removal (digitally painting out safety lines) could be $10k or less, other full CG shots with fully animated 3D characters and environments could cost $100k or more. Hundreds of artists over several studios will work on a short effects sequence and with average shot lengths as short as 3 seconds, I think we can now appreciate the staggering amount of work and investment that is put into the visual effects that are often taken for granted in modern feature films.

The biggest studios producing animated films right now are without a doubt Disney (“Frozen”), including their subsidiary Pixar (“Toy Story”), DreamWorks (“Shrek”) and the relative newcomer but sucessful Illumination Entertainment (“Minions”). These are international multi billion dollar companies with huge distribution networks and their budgets reflect this. To get some rough figures we can take a look at the top grossing animated films, their production costs and run times (source).

Sequels such as Toy Story 3 dominate the top charts.

3D Animated Feature Film Budgets

Budgets and running times of the top grossing animated feature films (as of July 2015)

Title

Worldwide Gross

Budget (est')

Run Time

Cost Per Second

Average: $24,156

Frozen

$1,279,852,693

$150,000,000

102 minutes

$24,510

Toy Story 3

$1,063,171,911

$200,000,000

103 minutes

$32,362

Despicable Me 2

$970,761,885

$76,000,000

98 minutes

$12,925

Finding Nemo

$936,743,261

$94,000,000

100 minutes

$15,667

Shrek 2

$919,838,758

$150,000,000

93 minutes

$26,882

Ice Age 3

$886,686,817

$90,000,000

94 minutes

$15,957

Ice Age 4

$877,244,782

$95,000,000

88 minutes

$17,992

Shrek 3

$798,958,162

$160,000,000

93 minutes

$28,673

Shrek 4

$752,600,867

$165,000,000

93 minutes

$29,569

Madagascar 3

$746,921,274

$145,000,000

93 minutes

$25,986

Monsters University

$743,559,607

$200,000,000

104 minutes

$32,051

Up

$731,342,744

$175,000,000

96 minutes

$30,382

Kung Fu Panda 2

$665,692,281

$150,000,000

90 minutes

$27,778

Ice Age 2

$660,940,780

$80,000,000

91 minutes

$14,652

Big Hero 6

$652,127,828

$165,000,000

102 minutes

$26,961

Bucking the trend of top seated sequels, Frozen takes the #1 spot.

So in terms of 3D animation cost, from this sample we can discern an estimated average budget of $24,156 for every second of animation that makes it into the final cut, or just under $1.5 million per minute. This is not including any marketing or distribution costs, which can sometimes exceed the cost to produce the film. With these astronomical figures in mind it is clear to see why studios tend to play it safe with big hitting sequels that draw in audience numbers with familiar characters. That being said, Frozen has proven there is a demand for new ideas when the story resonates with movie goers.

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6 Comments

Interesting look at the costs of 3d animation. I remember that I used to think that 3d animation was “easier” than 2d – “Oh, the computer does everything!” But you don’t realize how much effort goes into these movies that we love. Thanks for sharing this!

Please tell me how much a VFX output with average CGI ( BG extension with some CGI trees etc.) would cost in the US and the same thing India. And full 3D animated, (Approximately 4 to 6 characters) for a film as well as television series, would cost in India.